The present invention relates to an industrial conveyor. More particularly, the present invention relates to a conveyor that serves as a continuous link to transfer objects between an intermittent or batch conveyor and a constant speed conveyor.
Conveyors are utilized in industry for a variety of purposes, including moving objects during manufacturing, typically between various work stations, for different steps in manufacturing processes. The time required to work on the product at each work station typically varies. The most time-consuming step limits the speed of the manufacturing process as a whole, as the flow of products must be slowed or periodically completely stopped to accommodate the longest step. This slowing or stopping can adversely affect the quantity and quality of the products made by certain manufacturing processes.
The food product manufacturing industry is an example where these disadvantages may arise. The pressing of food products, such as tortillas, typically requires complete stoppage of the press conveyor belt while the press is applied to flatten a batch of dough balls on the belt. This stopping and starting results in tortillas being delivered in batches to the next station, i.e., the oven, rather than in a steady flow. The resulting distribution of tortillas on the oven belt is therefore a repeating pattern of spaced apart batches of tortillas. Due to the batch distribution, the oven temperature may disadvantageously vary. "Hot spots" and "cold spots" may develop in the oven. This results in non-uniform baking, i.e., some tortillas are baked more completely than others. This overbaking is worsened when the desired product requires a longer duration of pressing time.
Specifically the section of the oven conveyor that is occupied by a batch of tortillas cools the batch advances through the oven chamber, while the sections of the oven belt vacant of product become overheated. Thus tortillas on subsequent cycles may or may not bake evenly dependent upon whether they are advanced onto a section of the oven belt that in its last revolution, was or was not vacant.
Conventional press/oven systems also can cause difficulties because they do not constantly regulate the quantity flow of product to the infeed sections of the automatic packaging systems.
To maximize production rates, the conveyor segments of the press/oven machines are operated at high surface speeds. At the transfer point from press to oven the lapsed space between batches occurs. As a result, downstream in the process, presently available detection devices, used for counting and packaging, and operating at their threshold of accuracy, frequently miscount the product.
When the distance between the batches of tortillas on the press oven systems are more constant, the performance of these detection devices and packaging devices is improved.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a conveyor which accumulates a product delivered periodically from a first station and delivers the product substantially uniformly to a second station.